Sally loves lines of people – as voters readily sign both Water Protection Petitions – Initiative 6 and Charter Amendment 5 – Yes! to Protect.

Why I choose to volunteer for the Save Tacoma Water can be summed up in three words, past, present and future.

Past: My mother’s parents and sisters emigrated from Pisa, Italy to Tacoma. They did not know how to speak, read or write English when they arrived. My mother was the first person born on American soil in her family. She spoke, read and wrote Italian as her first language and acted as translator for her parents her entire life. I feel immense gratitude for all of the immigrates that eventually found their way to Tacoma in order to build a city out of dirt and mud. These hardworking individuals that crossed oceans and continents suffered difficulties that we cannot envisage today. I know these stories personally. It is my responsibility to honor their sacrifice and hardships by continuing to enhance our standard of living.

Present: I am volunteering for the present generation that seems to be more addicted to social media than concerned for their resources. The majority of them appear to be brainwashed by the media. When I ask the generations of X,Y and millennials to sign the petitions, they often say “not now” as they are running into the store to shop and spend money, and I think to myself “if not now, when?”

Future: I volunteer for the security of the next generation that will be forced to live in an environment that has an unforeseeable future and standard of living. It is the least that I can do to lend them a helping hand that will secure that they can live and prosper in the city that we will be leaving behind.

Sally Radford working the line outside the democratic caucus meeting recently.

Collecting signatures on the Water Protection Petitions. Sally has mastered working multiple boards – note that she has four people signing all at once. Go Sally!

Shout out to our volunteers! We have new petition sheets with a new look. Why? Well, we needed to print more. Plus, it will help us in our signature collecting efforts for the next month and they will prepare voters for a yes vote in November.

Volunteers will no longer have to respond to the question, “We stopped the methanol refinery, why do we need these petitions?”

The citizens of Tacoma and all the rest of the loud voices from around the region can all take a bow for getting Northwest Innovation Works to cancel the project, but remember this quote from the Tacoma News Tribune:

“Right now, we no longer have a project in Tacoma,” Godley said by phone.

By STW volunteer, Debby Herbert

As a California native and transplant to Tacoma, I have additional perspective on why our water protection petitions are so important, and is why I am working with this petition campaign, and feel so dedicated to this cause. California is almost always in some state of water conservation and/or drought status, so I have lived in a water scarce environment for a good part of my life. Voluntary and mandatory water cutbacks, I assure you, is not a place we ever want to be and is a primary reason I moved away from California and came to the Northwest. On my four day exploratory trip to the area it rained non-stop for four days, and I said to myself on my return trip home, “I’ll take it…there is water!”

Dan Decker is one of Save Tacoma Water’s super volunteers and turned in a huge stack of petitions a few minutes ago – 31 full pages (640 signatures) of blue petitions and 24 full pages (480 signatures) of green petitions. Wow, this is a superfabulous effort. A huge thanks goes out to Dan!

Dan is a dedicated volunteer petitioning daily, going door to door. Tacoma residents are readily signing the petition. Volunteers report that the signers prefer the “blue” petition because they understand that the charter amendment cannot be overturned by the politicians. The clock is ticking, if you haven’t joined with all of us Citizen Lawmakers, now is the time to get out and collect signatures – our deadline, June 15th is quickly approaching.

Check out our ad in this week’s edition of the Tacoma Weekly (available Thursdays) – the paper in town to read if you want to be informed, especially when it came to reporting about the methanol refinery. Support this newspaper as the publisher is one of the visionary people endorsing our Water Protection Petitions.

Turn in your signatures whenever you have a full page so we hit our weekly goals on both petitions. Offer the blue sheets first as we need more of those.

Ron Morrison has great success stopping potential signers by saying, “Do you drink Tacoma water?”, then he quickly asks if they are registered to vote in Tacoma.

Volunteers are needed to cover Wal-Mart (off Union) every day from 6:00 -8:00 PM for the next several weeks. Soon, the out-of-town paid petitioners will arrive and Wal-Mart will not be available as the pros will staff this location round the clock. So, now is the time to go to Wal-Mart where you can collect 15-20 signatures an hour. Petition with a partner. There are two doors, one is busier than the other. If you work it alone, set up a table at the slow door with our great signs – people will sign the petition sheet without even having to ask them to because everyone wants to protect our water.

Happy petitioning! See you soon.